


A Buried Temple

by takadainmate



Category: Atlantis (UK TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mystery, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takadainmate/pseuds/takadainmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a valley to the East and a long abandoned city that was all but forgotten. There was a reason it had been forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Buried Temple

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisissirius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisissirius/gifts).



There was light finally breaking over the horizon; Jason could see it spilling across the empty, dusty floor in purples, then reds, then yellows.

It should have been warm, he thought, remembering the sunlight of Greece – the Greece he’d known – smooth across his face that morning on the beach. Before. That life was like a dream now, far enough away, fantastical enough that sometimes –more often now – Jason wondered if it has ever happened at all. This was his reality now, for all that it seemed just as unbelievable as what has been his life in that other world before.

But it was cold. It was cold and there was nothing Jason could do to get warm. His clothes were too thin. He carried no supplies. There was nothing that could start a fire, no matter how hard they’d tried that first night. It was as though the air was too thin. Sometimes Jason’s chest felt tight, weighed down, and he wondered if somehow they’d travelled up and up and up enough that there was nothing left to breathe.

Jason was certain that even with a hundred layers of wool and a roaring fire there could be warmth in this place.

Beside him Pythagoras shivered, sighed unhappily in his sleep. All Jason could do was move closer so that they were pressed closely side to side – as close as he could get without sitting on him – careful so as not to wake him.

In other times, in other stories, Jason would have welcomed the day. The night was supposed to be that unknown, that dangerous time when monsters came out to kill you and eat you. But not here. Not in this city. 

They would have to move soon; find somewhere to hide. They should have gone further, kept moving no matter how much they were asleep on their feet, no matter how much their stomachs’ twisted with hunger and their throats burned with thirst. 

The sun crept closer to Jason’s toes and he drew away, pulling his legs closer to his chest as though the light would burn him. Maybe it would. This place was all wrong; backwards and upside down. The city shifted around them every time they looked away or closed their eyes. 

But then, Jason was beginning to wonder if they were what was wrong; if they were the demons they’d been accused of being.

Maybe they’d died and they couldn’t remember it. Maybe they didn’t want to remember it. 

Except that Jason was cold and sick with hunger and Pythagoras had bruised all up his arms that were purpling. No ghost would hurt like that.

“You’re worrying too much.” 

Pythagoras’s voice was quiet, but still surprising in the silent morning; counterpoint to the stillness, the absence of the sound of a breeze or an animal or a breath.

And Jason had thought Pythagoras dead asleep.

“What’s to worry about?” Jason shook his head, smiling. “You know me. I never worry.”

Pythagoras rubbed his eyes; Jason could see him wince. He was pale – paler than usual. But he still looked up at Jason and smiled back. 

“Of course you don’t.” 

They felt it then; the shift from night to day, the air charged; the beginning of noise and movement.

Pythagoras looked to the line of sunlight creeping across the floor and frowned.

“This is someone’s house.”

Jason nodded. He’d suspected as much. There were frescos on the wall, what once must have been bright, colourful scenes of revelers dining; wine being poured, red-cheeked faces grinning at each other across a table laden with food. Now chipped and faded with time the eyes of the figures looked dulled; dead. Most of all Jason hated those eyes. 

“We should go,” Pythagoras said. 

A part of Jason wanted to ask where to; wanted Pythagoras to be able to give him an answer. But he knew he couldn’t. Instead, Jason nodded again and moved to help Jason up.

They had nothing to gather. They left no trace. They moved on.

**

By midday, the same as every day they’d been stuck in this city, Jason’s ears rand and he felt sick to his stomach from the noise and the smell and the movement around them. The people drifted like ghosts, talked too loudly in words Jason didn't understand. 

“It’s ancient,” Pythagoras had said that first day, eyes wide and full of interest. Tired now, Pythagoras cast his eyes to the dusty ground and said, “It’s the same.”

The same day, over and over and over and they both knew how it ended.

**

They came to a temple they hadn’t seen before, it’s heavy, ornate doors wide open, smoke billowing out and screams – howls – coming from within. 

Once, Jason would have moved without hesitation, his instinct telling him those cries were wrong; that he needed to stop them; that he needed to save someone. 

Now he lingered because he’d made that mistake the first day and now Pythagoras was bruised and moved carefully with every step because every step hurt him. That was Jason’s fault. 

No matter how much he mistrusted it though there was something different about this place. Something alive where everything was grey and faded. Something that breathed. 

Jason looked to Pythagoras. He was watching the smoke, watching the people. Pythagoras took a step back, further into the shadows so that he stood with his back to the wall. This was where they spent their days now, skirting the edges of the mirages of crowds, moving through the dim light of narrow lanes hemmed in on either side by tall grey buildings. Not as tall as the buildings he remembered from before, but tall for here; for Atlantis. 

Wanting Pythagoras to know he wouldn’t let anything happen to him again Jason reached out, put a hand on his shoulder, ignored the way Pythagoras flinched. He didn’t pull away but after a long breath leaned into Jason and said, “I’m alright.”

They didn’t talk much here; it had proved too dangerous, but Jason had needed to hear it because there was no deception in Pythagoras’s voice. He could always tell when Pythagoras was lying to him. Or, at least, Jason liked to think so. 

“I’ll go. You stay here,” Jason tried to insist; he didn’t want to leave Pythagoras anywhere in this place but the alternative was worse. Jason didn’t want to risk it. But Pythagoras clutched at the sleeve of Jason’s tunic and raised his eyebrows. 

“You’re not leaving me here.”

“We don't know what’s in there,” Jason argued.

“All the reason for me to go too.” Pythagoras was stubborn. 

Jason turned to fully face Pythagoras, put his hand over Pythagoras’s arm, lightly. “They might… It might be like before. What happened…” Jason couldn’t find the words. He didn’t hate many things but he was beginning to hate the magic in this world for the harm it always caused. For the harm it had caused Pythagoras. 

In front of him Pythagoras’s expression softened and he smiled, a half-wry thing that Jason had seen a hundred times and never got tired of seeing. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Pythagoras said and shook his head. “I’m not staying behind so you might as well accept it and save us both the trouble.”

Jason knew there was no arguing. For all that people called Pythagoras weak Jason thought of Pythagoras as the strongest of them all. And he would take no coddling. 

“Stay close,” he said and drew his sword; it had proved useless more often than not but sometimes he’d managed to make a strike hit home somehow. He’d make it count now if he had to. Pythagoras nodded and they crept towards the temple. 

**

At his most hopeful Jason liked to think that Hercules had escaped, or better, never been caught up in this place at all. It was possible. He hadn’t come this way with them. 

Pythagoras told him a story:

“Once, many years ago,” he’d said, days ago when they weren’t yet hungry and tired and Pythagoras was whole and healthy, “We went to the market. Hercules had drunk too much the night before but we went early because otherwise you get lumbered with two day old smoked meat and that is never a happy experience.” 

“We don’t go to the market early,” Jason pointed out.

Pythagoras looked away shiftily. “The market isn’t like it used to be.”

“But Hercules is always saying-”

“So anyway,” Pythagoras interrupted. “It was early, the sun was barely up.” They both looked out the window of their home for the night; an old wreckage of a simple house, the roof mostly gone but the walls protection from the night breeze and the wasteland sand. They’d been walking through ruins for hours that day. It must once have been a great city. 

The sun was nearly up here too.

“And I lost Hercules in the crowd almost immediately,” Pythagoras went on. “I didn't see him again for the rest of the day. I wasn’t worried. I thought he had just found a wine merchant or something. But when he hadn’t returned by the next morning I began to be concerned.”

“You found him?” Jason asked.

Pythagoras nodded. “On the other side of Atlantis. He’d got lost. And _then_ found a wine merchant.”

Jason laughed. “So the moral of the story is to never trust Hercules’ sense of direction.”

Pythagoras grinned. “Not unless you’re looking for a wine merchant.”

It was a cold morning – unusually cold – but Jason somehow felt warm.

**

The doors of the temple were wreathed in the shapes of hunch-backed monsters with claws and teeth and the forms of men lying piled high, limbs torn from their bodies, stylized blood flowing towards the edges of the door. Jason had never seen anything like it outside of this place. 

As they edged closer, as quietly as they could, as far from anyone else as they could get, the afternoon light shone from the gilded faces of the monsters dancing across the doors, making them look almost alive. 

There was a crowd of people around the entranceway, all yelling and shouting angrily, frantically. Baying for blood, Jason thought, and the scene reminded him of the monsters on the temple door.

Jason wanted to ask Pythagoras what they were saying but he didn't dare risk it. But they knew, he was certain. Unlike anywhere else they’d seen so far in the city these people had some idea of what was coming. 

Behind him, Pythagoras gripped Jason’s shoulder. They didn’t have much time now and there was no way they were getting through the crowd without being noticed. There was a pressure growing, like altitude, and Jason’s ears popped uncomfortably. It got worse the closer to the temple they moved. The sky was changing to a sickly yellow colour, the volume of the crowd was rising as though they were becoming more real. 

The stone of the temple seemed more solid, the paint covering its walls more vibrant. It cast a long shadow over them.

“We have to go inside,” Pythagoras whispered in Jason’s ear. 

They did, but he didn’t want to. Over the heads of the mob Jason could make out something of the interior; smoke-filled and shadowed, flickering lamps the only light. 

Pythagoras pushed him forward and Jason had to keep moving to avoid falling over. He threw Pythagoras an irritated look over his shoulder but didn’t stop. 

He kept low, tried to jostle with the crowd, reached out a hand to take hold of Pythagoras’s wrist and didn’t let go, pulling him along behind him. 

They were either lucky or these people were too preoccupied because they made it through the crowd unseen. But as soon as they stepped passed the throng, across the threshold, a man in ornate robes within the temple turned to them and met Jason’s eyes. He held a wicked-looking knife in his hand, his fingers slipping on the handle where it was wet with blood. There was a body at his feet; a woman whose throat had been cut, her face turned away. 

The reaction was almost immediate. The man straightened, pointed his knife to Jason and spoke, his voice full of rage and hatred. The next thing Jason knew Pythagoras was grasping at his back, calling his name; the crowd had him. 

It was like before only worse; there were more of them; these people were filled with bloodlust and hate and fear –Jason could see it in the way they looked at him, at the way they grabbed Pythagoras by the neck and _squeezed_ , and kicked and spat and clawed. Jason brought up his sword and charged, swinging at anyone who had hold of Pythagoras, pulling him away. His sword cut and the crowd backed away, still hissing and shouting. 

Jason pulled Pythagoras close, dragging him deeper into the temple. Pythagoras was gasping for air and there was blood on his lips but his eyes were open and alert and he said, “Jason,” in warning just as the man with his rich clothes and the bloodied knife bore down on Jason to stab him in the back. There was no time for anything but to let Pythagoras go, turn and tackle the man’s legs. They both went crashing to the ground, the knife skittering across the hard floor away from them; Jason’s sword still in his hand. He didn’t even think, but drew back and ran the man through, the tip of his sword clanging dully where it struck the floor. 

There was silence then. Jason could feel the blood of the man he’d just killed seeping through the fabric of his trousers where he kneeled. Pythagoras was the only one who moved, hauling himself to Jason’s side. The crowd watched them.

“It’s over,” Pythagoras said. 

An ear-splitting, inhuman screech filled the air, louder than it had ever been before, bad enough that Jason thought his head would implode. He held on to Pythagoras and Pythagoras held him back as the world filled with white-hot flame, cold as it touched them, and the people around them screamed and clawed at their own skin as they burned, flesh dissolving, gurgling. Jason shut his eyes tightly because he didn't want to see this again, because the light hurt, and focused on Pythagoras’s breathing, on the feel of his uneven breath against his cheek, reminding Jason they were still alive. 

He held on.

**

Pythagoras longed for paper, Jason could tell. Paper or something to write on. 

“This language,” he said looking down at an open scroll that to Jason looked like some kind of ledger. “I’ve only ever seen it twice before.”

They were out in the open and it was day and they couldn’t linger but Pythagoras looked so excited it was hard to tell him they had to leave. “What does it say?” Jason asked. 

“What?” Pythagoras glanced up at Jason. “Oh. ‘Timber, seventeen length; Wine jugs, five of the best quality; Wool fabric, ten-”

“A ledger,” Jason concluded. 

**

As Jason woke he felt the familiar dizziness, the nausea and pounding in his head, and lay still, trying not to vomit. Three times he’d woken up this way. Three times they’d seen this city destroyed and every time the same. 

It was dark and cold. It was always dark and cold when he awoke but this time when he blinked Jason couldn’t tell when his eyes were open and when they were closed. He couldn’t feel his fingers or his toes and it was almost too much just to turn onto his side, grasping at the area around him. 

“Pythagoras,” Jason called, because he couldn’t find him. “Pythagoras.” His voice echoed. They were in a temple, Jason remembered. They must still be there. 

There was no reply.

Jason held still, held his breath, listening for any sign of life, and then an unhappy groan, a cough, and, “Yes. Yes, I’m here.”

Jason let his head fall to the cold ground in relief.

“You’re all right?” Pythagoras asked croakily. There was a shuffle of fabric, the scrape of leather shoes against stone floor. 

“Mostly. You?” 

“Mostly.” 

It was too quiet. It was the kind of silence that Jason imagined came when you died. But Pythagoras was definitely alive; Jason could hear him rifling through his bag, saying, “We should drink the last of the water.” Pythagoras was alive and that was enough.

Stones struck together; sparks of light and suddenly there was light; meagre, unsteady light from a torch but enough to see the colour of Pythagoras’s face, the red marks around his neck, and the blood on his cheek. 

Jason sat up immediately, checking him more closely. “Mostly all right.” Jason scowled. “You look like you’ve been-”

“Attacked by a mob?” Pythagoras smiled. “It’s nothing serious.”

But still Jason insisted on feeding him water and the last of their biscuits too and running his hands over Pythagoras in case he was hiding some more serious injury. 

“What were they saying?” Jason asked as he wiped the blood from Pythagoras’s face. There was nothing to clean the cuts with.

He felt more than saw Pythagoras shrug. “The same as before; demons. Ghosts. The priest demanded we undo the curse.”

“The priest?”

“He was the one with the expensive pointy knife.”

The man who had tried to stab Jason in the back. 

“He knows? What’s happening here?”

Pythagoras sighed, frustrated. “I don't think so. I don’t know. If I had time to listen more, or we could find the library, or someone would _speak_ to us instead of trying to kill us-“

He cut himself off. 

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re not the only one.” Jason hadn’t even been capable of keeping Pythagoras safe much less work out what was going on here. How to get them out. All he could do was sit in this pool of guttering light that Pythagoras had created and watch his friend try to look around them. 

He batted away Jason’s hands. “Stop fussing.” Then said, “I can’t see a thing.”

Outside the light of the torch was an impenetrable black world, as though nothing existed beyond them, everything else engulfed by the cold, burning light, even light itself. 

“We could try moving,” Jason suggested. 

“We’d have to anyway,” Pythagoras agreed. 

Hauling up Pythagoras to his feet, he didn’t protest when Jason took his wrist again and they moved, slowly, cautiously, into the darkness. 

**

“I always wondered,” Pythagoras said quietly the second night – what was probably night – “Where you came from. You never said.” 

It was easy in this unreal place to admit, “I don’t think I know anymore.” 

Pythagoras shifted so that he was looking up at Jason from where his head lay in Jason’s lap. His eyes still didn’t focus properly and his words sometimes slurred together. “Did you? When we first met?”

“I thought I did.” It was easy, too, to run his hand through Pythagoras’s hair. Pythagoras’s eyes closed.

“Do you remember what it was like?” he asked.

Jason thought of how we’d worn a suit with a tie and wandered through grey cities, never thinking to stop and look at where he was. Only ever looking at where he was going.

“Like this,” Jason said.

**

They’d only meant to watch. They’d told each other they were only going to watch; they could survive another day even though their food and water were gone now. 

But even knowing that this would all happen again tomorrow, even knowing that no one would stay dead, it was an impossible promise. 

“They’re calling her a witch,” Pythagoras whispered urgently in Jason’s ear. His fingernails were biting into the skin of Jason’s shoulder.

She could only have been twelve, maybe thirteen. Her eyes were red. She was sobbing. Jason didn’t need Pythagoras to tell him she was begging for her life. This was the woman they’d seen with her throat cut. And there was the priest, that opulent knife in one hand, dragging the girl by the hair with the other. 

Jason drew his sword and Pythagoras’s grip on him loosened. Pythagoras snorted softly. “Do you need your sword to _watch_?”

“Yes,” Jason said. But Pythagoras was standing up too; even weaponless, Jason knew he couldn’t sit by and let this happen. 

There was the mob blocking the entranceway, still enraged – like a pack of wild dogs, Jason thought – still baying for blood. 

The priest raised his knife, chanting, his words coming so fast they sounded like they were tripping over each other, and the crowd hissed and cheered. 

They were only two and the crowd were so many but Jason wasn’t afraid. He wondered if they too would live again tomorrow if they died here, now. 

Then, suddenly, the priest’s chanting came to a halt. He choked, looked down at the girl. She was looking back up at him and she was speaking. Pythagoras’s grip on Jason’s shoulder tightened again. 

“She _is_ a witch.” Pythagoras sounded surprised. 

It was difficult to hear over the roaring, bellowing crowd, but her words sounded familiar. Jason had heard something like them before. In Atlantis. In the temple of the Oracle. 

And there it was again; the start; the pressure and queasiness that marked the end. 

“It’s her curse,” Pythagoras said. “She did this.”

But killing her didn’t stop it and even though her words became stronger with every breath, tears still streamed down her face and there was fear in her voice. She was still just a child. 

“She still doesn’t deserve to be murdered.”

No matter what she’d done, or not done. It wasn’t for Jason to judge. It wasn’t for a crazed mob to judge. 

“No.” Pythagoras shifted again, ready to move. “No, she doesn’t.”

The priest bared his teeth, still struggling to breathe, pulled his arm back to strike. 

Jason sprang from their hiding place, made straight for the priest, and it was easy to knock him to the ground with the hilt of his sword, to kick his knife away. 

“I don’t want to kill you,” Jason said, but the priest had recovered from his surprise and dug a smaller knife into Jason’s ankle. Jason hadn’t even seen where it had come from. He stumbled back, crying out in pain and Pythagoras was there pulling him back, taking the sword from Jason’s fingers. 

It was hard to concentrate with the agony radiating from his ankle to his leg to his chest but Jason saw Pythagoras cut the priest across the chest, heard gurgling as the priest choked to death on his own blood. Then, it was as though the air was suddenly clear; no weight, no sickness in his stomach, and the muffled opaqueness of the world fell away. The crowd fell silent.

“You’ll be all right.” Pythagoras was suddenly kneeling beside him, gripping his leg. Jason knew what was coming.

“Do you have to-” 

Then he screamed as Pythagoras yanked the dagger from his flesh. 

**

Jason heard voices in his sleep sometimes; phantoms of before. He thought that was what he heard now, except this voice was familiar, _close_ in a way the others weren’t. Close but far away.

There were warm hands on his back.

“You’re going to be the death of me, Jason,” the voice said fondly.

He never would, Jason thought. He’d never let that happen.

And then someone he didn’t recognise spoke.

“And what of us?” it asked. A girl. Scared.

Pythagoras said, “You’re already dead.”

**

There was light finally breaking over the horizon; Jason could see it spilling across the broken ground in blues and pinks. It was already warm. Or maybe he was just warm. He could feel sweat on his back and on his face, a discomfort that felt like fever. 

His leg felt like it was on fire. 

“How am I meant to believe you, Pythagoras,” Hercules said, “when you provide me with no evidence other than some cuts and bruises.”

“And a stabbed Jason,” Pythagoras pointed out. 

“And a stabbed Jason. But that’s hardly a rarity.” 

“This stabbed Jason,” Jason said, “would like some water?”

“Jason!” Pythagoras was kneeling beside him again with a skin of water that tasted ridiculously glorious when he drank.

“He’s fine; look at it,” Hercules scoffed. “I’m not carrying him.”

“Of course you’re not,” Pythagoras laughed. He sounded awful and when Jason peered at him he looked it too.

“You look terrible, Pythagoras,” Jason told him.

Pythagoras smiled. “You look worse.”

Jason frowned. The last thing he remembered was the temple. He wondered if that, too had been a dream, except that his ankle burned and he remembered _that_. There was no city here thought – wherever they were – just orange and yellow rock and barren mountains and the hot sun above. Jason’s lips still felt dry. 

“How did we get here?” Jason asked.

He was lying on his back on the ground and he was certain he could feel every stone under him. 

The smile fell from Pythagoras’s face.

“The curse was broken. There’s nothing left of them anymore.”

A great city gone to nothing. Jason tried not to think of it as an omen. He tried to remember he didn’t – hadn’t – believed in omens. 

Jason nodded. He didn’t want to know any more. Instead, he levered himself up onto his elbows and turned to Hercules.

“And where have you been?”

“Oh, having a picnic.” Hercules rolled his eyes. “Where do you think? Looking for you two!” He gestured between them. “For days, I might add.” 

“I’m glad you did,” Pythagoras said quietly.

Or they’d have had no food or water, Jason realised. 

As he always did when Pythagoras said something nice, Hercules shifted his feet uncomfortably and blustered, “Well, yes, how would you two ever survive without me?”

“It’s true,” Jason agreed. 

Hercules grimaced, embarrassed, and turned on his heal. “I’m going to scout the path ahead. You two layabouts wait here,” and he was gone over the rise, leaving only footprints and a cloud of sand. 

For a long moment they sat in silence. Jason watched the sand, felt it beneath his fingers, and wondered if this was what had become of that city. 

“I don’t even know what it was called,” Pythagoras said eventually. 

Not Atlantis, Jason thought. 

“Does it matter?”

“It would be nice, I think, if they were at least remembered,” Pythagoras said. “I’d want to be remembered.”

It was too close to the truth. 

“I’d prefer you were alive.” Jason reached out and took Pythagoras’s wrist as he had in the city. But here there was none of the desperation, the despair, and yet the fear remained that one day Jason wouldn’t be able to keep holding on. To Pythagoras. To Atlantis. 

But Pythagoras smiled at him in reply and said, “I’d prefer you alive too,” and Jason knew then that he would do everything he could to never let go; not of Hercules or Atlantis. 

Not of Pythagoras. 

.End.


End file.
